As the most contagious disease humans had ever faced, measles was virtually guaranteed after exposure.
One of the earliest accounts of measles comes from a Persian doctor named Rhazes in the 9th century, but it wasn’t until 1757 that Scottish doctor Francis Home discovered it was caused by a pathogen and first attempted to make a vaccine.
When a measles outbreak hit a boys’ boarding school about 45 minutes outside Boston in January 1954, Enders sent one of his researchers, Thomas Peebles, to collect blood samples. Peebles drew blood from infected boys,
First Measles Vaccine Was 'Toxic as Hell'. Some children had fevers so high that they had seizures.
-Hilleman
Within a month, Peebles had isolated the virus from the blood of 13-year-old David Edmonston. By 1958, the Boston Children’s team had a live virus measles vaccine to test in disabled children institutionalized at Fernald School and Willowbrook State School, where close living quarters increased infection risk during outbreaks.
But the virus in the vaccine wasn’t weak enough: Most children developed high fevers and rashes similar to mild measles.
It took more than a decade for scientists to develop a single-shot vaccine that worked to fend off the measles without causing high fevers and rashes.
After turning to other experts, researchers came up with a way to grow the vaccine safely in eggs and give the vaccine with a simultaneous shot of measles antibodies to reduce side effects. By March 21, 1963, the FDA licensed the first live virus measles vaccine, Merck’s Rubeovax.
Until the vaccine’s debut in 1963, …measles, …killed 500 Americans a year and hospitalized 48,000
Other measles vaccines were soon approved, including an inactivated (non-live) one that same month with fewer side effects but less protection. It was pulled from the market in 1968, the same year Hilleman refined the vaccine into the one used today—one without the severe side effects and which didn’t require the extra shot of measles antibodies.
